In spite of being hopelessly bogged down in $700 billion wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush/Cheney administration appears set on a collision course with Tehran. In recent weeks, the White House’s war of words against Iran has sharply intensified, and grown increasingly bellicose. What is the White House up to? Either trying to bluff Tehran into abandoning its entirely legal but worrisome civilian nuclear power program, which would allow the administration to claim a major victory after so many reverses. Or, the lame duck Bush/Cheney Administration is attempting to divert attention from the worsening debacle in Iraq and intends to provoke an air and naval war against Iran as a last desperate, ideologically driven assault against its foes in the Muslim world. One is reminded of the suicidal banzai charges of cornered Japanese troops during World War II.... http://www.lewrockwell.com

U.S. officials from commanders in Iraq to President Bush have stepped up claims that Iran has been supplying Iraqi insurgents with weapons and training to kill U.S. troops."Iranian lethal support for select groups of Shia militants clearly intensifies the conflict in Iraq," said a U.S. intelligence assessment of Iraq released Friday. Such claims, however, are being met with denials from Iran and skepticism at home. Faulty U.S. intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which Bush used to justify in part the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has eroded much of the administration's credibility, military expert Anthony Cordesman said. "I'm not sure they understand how little credibility these statements have," said Cordesman, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The great risk is that what may be a real issue will not be seen as real outside the United States."...http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-02-04-iran-iraq_x.htm

Conservative American Congressman Phil English is among a growing number of Republicans betting their political future on a retreat from George W. Bush's plans to turn things around in Iraq. WASHINGTON -- Like many other Republicans in Congress right now, Rep. Phil English has no good options. His northern Pennsylvania district, home to a small but vibrant peace movement, has become increasingly disillusioned with President Bush's war in Iraq. At the same time, English's conservative base sees betrayal in anything short of full support for the war effort. "There is a level of polarization out there that makes any thoughtful discussion of nuanced differences very difficult," said English, a longtime GOP activist first elected with the Newt Gingrich revolution in 1994, during a recent interview in his Capitol Hill office. "The Republican base, which is substantial in my district, does not distinguish between criticizing the administration on tactics and butting heads ...http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,464455,00.html

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals -- including a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders -- in an eleventh-hour effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war. Army officers tend to refer to the group as "Petraeus guys." They are smart colonels who have been noticed by Petraeus, and who make up one of the most selective clubs in the world: military officers with doctorates from top-flight universities and combat experience in Iraq. Essentially, the Army is turning the war over to its dissidents, who have criticized the way the service has operated there the past three years, and is letting them try to wage the war their way. "Their role is crucial if we are to reverse the effects of four years of conventional mind-set fighting an unconventional war," ...http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/04/AR2007020401196.html

Deep inside the heart of the "Green Zone", the heavily fortified administrative compound in Baghdad, lies one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the war in Iraq. It is a cell from a small and anonymous British Army unit that goes by the deliberately meaningless name of the Joint Support Group (JSG), and it has proved to be one of the Coalition's most effective and deadly weapons in the fight against terror. Its members - servicemen and women of all ranks recruited from all three of the Armed Forces - are trained to turn hardened terrorists into coalition spies using methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles, when the Army managed to infiltrate the IRA at almost every level. Since war broke out in Iraq in 2003, they have been responsible for running dozens of Iraqi double agents....http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/04/nspooks04.xml

U.S. military officers offered their condolences on Monday to an Iraqi family south of Baghdad in a rare admission of error after killing two innocent Iraqis in an airstrike last Tuesday. A U.S. military statement released on January 31 said two "insurgents" out of a four-man team were killed as they were trying to plant a roadside bomb in the town of Mahmudiya. Calling the incident a "tragic accident," the officers on Monday handed out $2,500 to the family for each man killed. A small group of U.S. officers, accompanied by an Iraqi officer and Mahmudiya's mayor, entered a tent with their weapons where mourners gathered to pay respect to the victims, shaking hands with tribesman and drinking hot coffee. After one of the tribesmen lectured the Americans on their "many mistakes," Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Morschauser apologized to the gathering....http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/05/AR2007020500394.html